Amazon's New Coupon Policy (3-12-24)

@ASV_Vites

No Reference Price available ASINs must have a Reference Price Learn more about Reference Prices


Let’s see if this gets a response

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@ASV_Vites
Posted how to set a Reference Price for an item so you can set up a coupon without the Reference Price error.

Coupons: How to Set Up Similar Products to Have a Reference Price

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Coupons were a cost effective way to move inventory and stimulate a few sales when times got slow. I made the mistake of running a nice sale to try and fight back against a competitor who continuously has their item on sale. I wasn’t aware of the new rules. I went back to offer another sale and it was then suppressed. Silly me now my new sales requirement is well below the bottom I could sell at which was the last sale I offered. Now im stuck. My competitor who usually ran a $50 off promo has been running week long " Limited Time Deal" specials. I tried to find a way to do the same but Im not elligible. The only think the deals section of Amazon offers me is a lightning sale. Historically we lost money doing those since it costs $150 to run and we don’t make enough sales to cover the cost of doing it.

I guess my question is how long can my competitor keep running their limited time deal which in reality is only $10 cheaper than they usually sell at ( These products cost hundreds) and why aren’t we allowed to run the same deal?

Important note: We are are own brand and designed/ patented our own product so we are not selling the same product as them but another brand in the same category.

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Limited time deals have been locked down pretty tight and to those with extremely high sales.

In my world, where we used to run LTD’s on our top seller (the only thing that was ever eligible for us) we are now locked out. I’m talking about an item that moves 6K units a month is now just eligible for lightning deals. They do work well for us so we run them. SAS covers the cost of 1 deal per week so we don’t pay fees but we pay SAS a hell of a lot more than that.

I’ve been told by my current SAS manager who has a major case of loose lips that LTD’s now are reserved for sellers who spend a ton on PPC (pay to play), and, of course, for Amazon’s products and 1P items.

We only spend 6% of sales on PPC so that’s not good enough to open the gates.

If you are running list (MSRP) / Sale pricing ordinarily, and don’t care about showing list (if Amazon is even giving you the strikethrough) - You can change “Your Price” and “List Price” to your ordinary Sales price, and remove the sale price and dates of course, and you should be able to run coupons again. This is what we did.

The alternative strategy, if you want to keep 2 tier pricing, is upthread where you go in every 3 hours and extend the coupon a day and it will keep running. If it’s been suppressed by the time you get to it, you can still change the date and it will come back to life for 3 hours.

I did this around the clock for 9 days until I figured out how to get around the issue which I believe is a glitch…

Was hoping that would be fixed by now. Guess not.

Good Luck
Steve

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I could be wrong here, but I think it has less to do with your % spend and more to do with your $ value spend. Amazon seems to only care about how much revenue a seller’s giving them for the most part. If you were pushing 50K units / month and still spending 6% of sales on PPC you’d have a lot more opportunities

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You might be right.

Even so, it’s despicable that it’s pay to play when it comes to stuff like this, especially since it wasn’t like this until Jan of this year.

Of course there’s no way to prove this other than hearsay. Just the way Amazon likes it.

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Nail, meet hammer.

More than a singular one of them.

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Well, the other option is to let everyone have access to it, which is even worse. There’s enough promotions and “deals” as it is.

Isn’t that what Amazon is supposed to be about? Deals and promotions? Best price for Amazon’s precious buyers.

I understand your point with the messiness that would ensue but nevertheless…

I understand setting parameters but one of them shouldn’t be who pays Amazon more for advertising IMHO.

And it that is the case, then tell us so we don’t run around in circles trying to figure out why something we did every 28 days for years can’t be done anymore.

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Which is probably why they let things go for so long. But it’s gotten to the point where it’s such a mess they had to do something.

And of course Amazon never tells people the truth because they want to keep people guessing. If they said “You need to spend 1 million a year on ad spend to get these benefits,” then people spending substantially less may not spend money chasing benefits they think they might get, and people spending substantially more might scale back spending while retaining the same benefits.

By keeping everyone in the dark you keep people chasing an unknown goal which = more money for them.

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WelloffThirstyJohndory-size_restricted-103122(NailMeetHammer_ASV)

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There’s a lot more that I can tolerate with clear upfront communication, than with bizarreness that sends me on wild goose chases in good faith.

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